
Here are two videos of George Sodini, the man guilty of the LA Fitness gym shooting just outside of Pittsburgh. One is him talking to the camera, the other is a creepy tour of the exterior and interior of his house.
UPDATE - To keep up to date on everything we’ve been able to uncover about George Sodini, including over twenty photos, screenshots of his other website, poems and much more, keep checking our George Sodini category.
Click here to read the full text of George Sodini’s online diary.
This next video was very disturbing to me because the contents of his house combined with his narration screams “unhealthy desperation.”
The books on his table are Body Language Secrets: A Guide During Courtship & Dating, Office Politics : The Women’s Guide to Beat the System and Gain Financial Success and How to Date Young Women: For Men over 35. They are all by R. Don Steele, who runs the web site http://www.steelballs.com offering advice to men who have troubles with women, especially younger women. (George was actually in a couple of his seminar videos, which can be viewed here) Click the links to find out more about those titles on amazon.com. Here’s a still image of them from the video:

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I do fell pity for him, fell sad that ha was so lonely, wanted to have more tham life could give to him. He had hope until a certain time. And so he gave up. And with anger decided in the wrong way to tell people what made him so miserable. Life is hard, sure is. He is not the only person alone in the planet. In the end we all are, becuase we have to strugle alone and we cannot count with people after all. If he had 1 good friend, If he had a good family this would not be happening to him or others that he killed. He felt that in this planet there is no love, no hope and he did what he did. I think the sistem of the society is responsable for that. Many belive the material life is the most important, he also belive in that. This is why so many live a miserable life. They strugle to have all things and are slave of the material life. They forgot spirituality, not religion, but spirituality, meditation, right thoughts and acts. Hope all the people that thinks like him could be help somehow or this will never stop.
Very sad that he became so bitter due to his loneliness but I have to disagree w/ you Vanna, we are not all alone and many of us myself included have plenty of friends and family we can rely on when things get tough.
This is so sad. Yeah he is a killer, but he is also someones son. Its a shame that he didnt seek help. we should pray for him and his victims, that he finds the peace of God, and that God shows his mercy to all and for the victims and him to rest in peace.
These are the saddest videos I’ve ever seen. What he did was unforgivable, but he seems like he could have been a nice guy had he been less insecure and found the right woman. He wasn’t bad looking, so it must have been incredibly frustrating for him. My condolences to all those who died or were wounded. Condolences also to the family of George Sodini. None of you deserved any of this pain and sorrow.
Loser, I haven’t had sex for 20 years either, and I’ve been married for 21
i AGREE TO PRAY FOR THE victims’ families but once you’re dead, there’s no use praying to God for that person, they’re even in heaven or hell at that point, and no amount of prayer will change God’s mind, in this case- Im fairly sure- bringing this guy out of hell. LOL though- my couch and chair match, Im sure the women will be really impressed. Dude was living large
He should have listened to more Miley Cyrus! She’s great!
what? why? kiddie music?
He and he alone is responsible for his self pity and he allowed it to fester within his selfish self to a boiling point that it destroyed countless people. He went out in a blaze of glory in a smug egocentric way to let the world no he was lonely. I feel only sorrow for his victims, no doubt he knows now his actions were horrible. He chose not to reach out to others, get help, and too he wanted someone younger, by 20 yrs to satisfy his lust, how pathetic. He was an emotionally child-like man who, unfortunately, had a major temper tantrum and struck out on innocent women, sounds like a whiny bully to me. AND there is a reason people reviled him, HIM… HIS PERSONALITY.. as he had nobody for all these years its because he wistfully wanted people, women, to come to him and that is just horrible. I have NO ABSOLUTE PITY FOR SUCH A PERSON.PERIOD.
I’m guessing the reason women didnt like him, is because he was the kind of guy who might kill them…women can pick up on these things.
yes he was…I found myself feeling sorry for him. The guy wasn’t ugly or anything, didn’t really look his age so I think, like others, that people just generally found him weird or creepy. I think also, like others, that he had his eye on someone specific as he was saying “she” like he had a particular person in mind. I just cannot imagine this guy hadn’t had a date in 19 years…this is almost Norman Bates weird.
That dude had some serious issues. This video is kinda sad. I mean hes taking us through his house and complimenting himself that his furniture matches and his router works…and you can hear how genuine he is in his voice….I mean it really wasn’t a joke. This guy was desperate for someone to like him.
yes bringing up the couch up from the basement and matching chair is impressive.
What’s up with all the nightlights? He’s a grown man. There’s at least two in the kitchen, they are lining the hallway…I mean, I could understand if you had little kids, but that wasn’t the issue. Somebody was very afraid of the dark. Somebody had a messed up childhood, I’m thinking…
Also, was it just me, or was anyone else looking for the secret room in the basement, where he provides the lotion for it to rub on it’s skin? Silence of the Lamb creepy…
You can still pray for people after they die. Just because they die in body on Earth does not mean that prayers won’t help their souls get into Heaven. For some people, they need prayers from others the most when they die; for others to pray to God to have mercy on their soul.
After watching these videos, I find my sympathies extended beyond the victims, their families and friends to George Sodini himself. I’ve worked with individuals with Asperger’s Syndrome, a higher functioning form of autism, and see in him many of its symptoms. The rigid thinking, his severe difficulties in establishing a relationship or “connecting”, his chosen profession in IT, and the overall oddness of his being, all suggest Asperger’s. Does this begin to excuse his actions? Of course not, but it does at some level explain them. Untreated, AS leads to social isolation, anger and depression, all of which this man exhibits. At age 48 he was too old to have received treatment from the schools he attended as a child. Thankfully that’s changed for the current generation of school children. Autism is now diagnosed in one out of every 150 children (mostly boys). These children can’t be swept away or they may grow up to become another George Sodini.
That is simply sad. I did not see any animals or even people. He must have been totally alone. Why oh why would someone want to kill themselves and take others with them in some viscious murder suicide? He said something like I hope she will like it…there was no she. God have mercy on him, and yes, on all his victims, and yes, even he needs prayers. I believe God understands us all in everything we do. Not that his deeds can be defended.
did not notice that, but this guy seemed just a bit different, like he could not interact with people as people.
There are more people like him out there than any of us realize. Today’s ideas and standards are so different from just a few years ago.
What planet did this guy live on? How you could you even meet 30 million people and also get rejected by them. Obviously if you are older and have not married it is hard to date someone your own age due to the issues involving children, either her ability to have them or her already having them. This guy from the videos seemed a little superficial. I not married and in my 40s, I live in California but have lived in the northeast before, I have found the women in that part of the country to be friendly LOL, I think there is more going on here than meets than we are being told, this guy probably had his eye on a specific girl, I cant believe in a place like Pittsburg he could not meet them. I lived in New York before and visited there also and you will meet women there, maybe not on the level of the southern states but friendly enough and definitely more friendly than Southern California. I think this guy was pissed about something else and unfortunately he chose to take it out on people that had nothing to do with his situation.
I wish he could get some help or go see some counselor to help him out before that happened. He should have thought about moving out of Pittsburg, PA to move south that where it will be warm place so he could have a good chance to meet the special ladies there since I do not believe that he couldn’t find one lady out of 30 millions there, something must be wrong with him. He could be going to some church that I am sure that there will be some ladies to find him a attractive! My smypathy to all victims’ families that happened at gym club.
Amen and I second that heaven and hell thing…I have never in my life heard anyone say it’s okay to pray for someone after they’re dead…I don’t get that thinking. When you’re dead, you’re dead and like you said, in heaven or hell and no amount of praying is going to help you at that point.
Wow it IS sad isnt it. Its comforting to see that people are having compassion on him. People are so cruel these days. I am pleasantly surprised. If only…Im sure there MUST be some attractive women out there that are just as wierd as HE was. Too bad. Life just sucks for some…
This is just incredibly sad. All this man wanted was to love and be loved, which is all any of us want for ourselves. It concerns me that there are more people out there who feel the way he did and might do the same thing. Maybe we ought to reach out to others more and give more of ourselves….
Stinker….I disagree he wanted to love and be loved….he wanted to control and control….
The issue is mental illness. He obviously had one, or more. A relationship with a woman would have been the furthest thing away from helping this man, and would have only made some woman who might have gotten involved with him subject to abuse from his unresoved issues. People should be emotionally and mentally stable to bring anything to a relationship. A partner in life is not THE answer to making another person complete. Healthy relationships are about giving and reciving, but mostly giving, so how can a mentally ill person whose sole focus in life is their delusion give anything in a relationship? No they end up being takers and abusers like his mother appearantly must have been based on his description of her being so rigid and cold. If you want to help people like this, then go to school and study psycology and become a therapist or councelor.But realize that these people will have to come to you to get that help, you can’t just reach out and help these kinds of personalities, they usually do not believe that they have a problem and so therfore are not open to your help. The help needs to come from parents working hard to raise children with love and warmth and balance in life so then you gotta fix the family mentally before they start raising miniature versions of themselves. Schools need to be alert to these types of problems as they develop in children and children need to stop being allowed to grow up with class distinctions, but is that ever gonna happen in this world we live in? Only God can chage this world, people will never be able to do it.
This is so sad. This poor man just seemed to be looking for someone to love and to be loved by. It had to have taken a massive toll on him for him to have committed such a horrific crime. I feel so sad for him and so very sad for the innocent ones who lost their lives because of his wounded self. I pray for the families of all those who died through such tragic circumstances.
I’m a successful 50 year old businesswoman and I wouldn’t let that man near me. He had to have a younger woman…whatever…he deserved to be alone. The days of older men younger woman…yawwwwn…many woman aren’t so needy anymore George. And this is just proof of that fact. I’m very sorry for the families of the victims but I can’t believe some of these posts have sympathy for him.
It’s not sympathy so much for him as the situation that ANYONE can find themselves in. In no way do I think he is not accountable, but at the same time this is clearly a mental disorder at the heart of this matter and having us sit around calling him evil (see above post) and saying he deserved to be alone is like saying a blind man doesnt deserve to read. For the sake of the victims and others that are sure to follow on future tragedies, we need to learn about disorders for the sake of preventing them instead of lighting our torches and heading for the barn.
Hey, folks, Pittsburgh has an “h” at the end…
He’s crying out for help… He’s desperate for someone to love him! But he also put himself in his situation, hes most likely so deperate for love, that he will take whatever he can get whenever he can get it. But since he hasn’t had sex in years (according to news) he probably scared off any hope he ever had. There’s a real person underneath all the scarey issues this dude had! Nobody had the chance to see it though because he was thriving on being someone he thought the ladies would like………… Right from the beginning of the video it sounded like he was selling himself!!! Ontop of all that he’s most likely got some mental issues going on inside that head of his. I know someone just like him, except he would be the poor version of this man. In my opinion, I’de run too!
If you have sympathy for him, you need to read his blog http://starcasm.net/archives/11102. I have to believe that any woman who had a conversation with him would have realized he had mental problems and there would have been no possibility of a relationship. Even scarier is the thought of what would have happened to any woman that did have a relationship to him. It would have been the guy who killed his wife/girlfriend and kept the body around.
This man was a predator of young women. He obviously wanted only young women and I blame our culture for putting that in his mind. He was 48, he should have been looking for a woman his age. If you were a 22-25 year old woman, would you date a man his age? Of course not! He was set up for failure. Men, learn something from this loser.
I’snt this sad. This jerk off kills and hurts scores of innocent people and there are still those who want to feel sorry for him. Screw him. His acts are selfish and cruel. If he wasn’t so self absorbed and self loathing he may have been able to connect with someone. But when your whole world revolves around self pity and shallowness… you weep what you sow. To those bleeding hearts who feel it necessary to sympathize with this evil, I would ask that you channel your thoughts and prayers in the direction of those who have lost their loved ones and those whose lives are forever changed by this monster and his thoughtless actions. And to the murderer, may you burn in hell!!!!
Ummmm, between referring to this guy as a “jerk off” and your questionable phrase “weep what you sow” (it’s reap what you sow), you are clearly demonstrating the very closed eye approach that keeps us from detecting these problems earlier and helping people. Yes, he did bad things. Yes, he came off a little creepy. And yes, he seemed a little OCD with both pleasing and resenting women.
But its pretty clear he needed some help that he didnt get. It’s also very clear that if people with your attitude have something to do about it, others like him never will and we’ll have to keep living with disasters like this one until we run out of evil jerk offs. Im not defending his actions, just the cause. At the heart, here is a man so humbled, humiliated, and desperate to be like you and have the “normal” life so many of us are lucky to have that he is willing to take this action to end the pain of not getting there and all some of us can say is “burn in hell”. Thats the sad part.
I hope we can further understand mental incapacities in the future to the point where they can even be explained to simple folks like yourself. Good luck.
That would require that they recognize that THEY, (not other people) have a problem and that they actually seek help from a psyciatrist. This kind of personality disorder keeps the ill person set in denial and self justification not in true self examination seeking sincere ways to change. He had some severely unresolved issues with both of his parents, as is obvious by his blogs. His parents have mental issues too or they could have tried to get him some help or at least have had a healthy relationship with him. Research these illnesses on the internet, and you will start to see what you are up against in trying to help these people. Having worked in mental healthcare, and dealing with issues in people like this guy every day, you realize that for people to try to change they must be open mentally to help themselves, and in the case of certain illnesses, there is no way to help them, and that is the sad reality. Mentally ill such as Sodini obviously are past that point and will NOT accept help from people, that does not fit into their perceieved reality.
Just as an outsider looking at the surface here; He obviously thought that the changes he made in his life (i.e. reading books and attending seminars) to his home (i.e. cleaning it up setting the table for 2) would please some imagined future woman, but he was obviously still trying to mentally please his mother, and there was no intention of really actually having a woman in his life, he would push them all away, by percieving the problem to be “their denial of him” to allow him to use this for justification of further delusions. In reality, he was never really open to a real relationship, because of his fears and delusions.
So just to sum it up, how would you have helped him? He needed mental healthcare. A person has to be really crazy, or commited some genuinely crazy act before they can be commited to a mental ward, other than that you have to be able to convince people with personality dissorders and mental illnesses to get the help that you can obviously see that they need, but that means they have to agree with you that the problem is them and then they have to want the help and part of the reason they have these mental issues to begin with, is because these mental heath illnesses are a self defense mechanism that prevents them from facing the painful realities that they long to deny and suppress. So if you can see this in a person and they can’t and you want to get them help, there’s nothing you can do. They have to check themselves into a mental ward not you, and they are almost always in denial that they need mental help, so how would you have helped him? I know someone who stabbed someone 57 times after a mental breakdown. The person was admitted to a mental ward by family, but the patient remained for 2 weeks after which time they were able to check themselves out, because they were not considered to be crazy by the state, and because they are free to go as they please if the state can’t be convinced of their illness. So again, how could you ar the average person have really helped Sodini? It’s so very sad. He needed help while he was being raised in an environmet that obviously trapped him emotionaly and mentally. Obviously that all went unnoticed. Schools at the grade school level should try to help children while they are little. Probably if class distinctions had been recognized and peer mediation and interventions had happend when he was in school then he might have developed differetly, but really, who’s to say.
Well, poor guy.. HOWEVER, there are lots of lonely people in this world that don’t go out & kill a bunch of innocent people. I could have given him alot of tips about women. If you look desperate, they run away. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, it’s just that his vibe & confidence were all wrong. He was sort of creepy & people shy away from that…. BUT IF he really wanted a woman, he could have easily gotten a mail order bride, I’m sure. sweetvyc
This guy’s life was ruined because he believed that male and female roles in the dating game have changed since “leave it to beaver” times – he believed all that is marketed and shown on TV, movies, magazines — the idea that “women pursue men” aggressively nowadays vs say the 1950′s – so he waited and waited for that special girl to come along and choose him – problem is, thats just the image we have been sold with women’s lib etc – its still up to the man to choose and pursue the woman, the more girls like you the more passive they become, its in their nature, man is the aggressor in the mating game , always has been, always will be – its just how we are wired – this guy thought that girls will go out of their way to pursue him, as many guys do, its a dangerous idea that will leave you out in the cold ,in the friend zone, lonely and utterly miserable
I appreciate your perspective, but you are trying to fit normal thinking into the mind of what was an obviously mentally ill man. Look up personality disorders like obcessive and pshycopathy, etc. you’ll start to see a connection there with this murderer’s thinking and the illnesses.
My heart goes out to the families & friends of those women killed and those who were injured. This story is sad on both sides. This man obviously had some mental health issues and for that I feel sorry for him, he needed some help & didn’t get it. He obviously was believing a bunch of hooey about women, he didn’t know the first thing about women. He mislead himself & let his issues gnaw at him until he snapped. Just watching his video about his house made the red flags go up. Normal guys wouldn’t be saying how the ladies would be impressed by his matching sofa & chair. Unless he was joking, but I don’t think he was. The house was sparse, empty of life, soul or warmth – that says a lot. The book he showed was a “how to’ on dating women! Seeing him taking about himself & then saying he would post it & see what came of it was more than a bit creepy. He didn’t say anything about himself, he only talked about emotional connection, nothing about what he likes, what makes him laugh, what he’s looking for. I feel just as sad for his family as I do for those of the women he killed & injured. The women who survived & witnessed this will live with it for a very long time. His family have to live with the knowledge of what he did.
Wow…..mafakas are crazy
Don’t alot of serial killers have girlfriends while in prison? Scott Peterson, Ramon Ramirez, etc? If this guy hadn’t have killed himself, he would be in jail for life with tons of wierd young women sending him mail. So sad.
Anybody else notice the book on the table called “How To Date Young Women.” Sad, and creepy.
i agree with you Moon, it was control. Real nut job and no I don’t feel sorry for him, my heart goes out to those families that loss there love ones because of a crazy man. Good thing he killed himself, because our justice system would had got him a lawyer, claim nuts etc etc, and every tax payer in Penn. would had end up paying for this sorry a$$.
But you’re missing the greater point. Sodini had an obsession with women, a fixation, a preoccupation with obtaining their affection and approval. That was his problem.
When it comes to our view of women, in this culture there is a continuum of Hatred on one extreme, and Adoration on the other extreme. So far that’s what the discussion has been about: how he failed in attracting women, how he failed by disrespecting women, how if he was just a little different he would have been acceptable to women. We are still — in this very discussion — focused on that continuum between Hatred and Adoration of women. Has it occurred to you that such a mentality is a little too woman-centric?
The opposite of Adoration is indifference. The opposite of Hatred is also indifference. All through this, Sodini’s fatal flaw was that he ascribed so much importance to the affection and approval of women. He both worshiped as well as despised them. He was preoccupied with them. He resented them and also longed for them. He should have found a way to de-emphasize women in his life. In fact, one time he did kind of allude to this when he wrote that he had started working out in the gym. For a brief period, he got some emotional respite because his mind wasn’t so preoccupied with women — neither hating nor adoring them.
Women do not deserve disrespect or disdain simply for existing. Neither are they automatically entitled to respect. Neutrality, and perhaps general indifference, is the attitude that an emotionally healthy man should have toward women who are unknown to him. A healthy man should carve out an identity for himself that does not depend on the validation or affection that women have to offer. They’re just people, after all. They’re not any more special than anyone else. Sodini was obsessed with them, and that made him repulsive to them, and that made them repulsive to him.
It wouldn’t have been this way if he had not been so focused on attaining their approval. I’ll say this about the cause of his thinking… A domineering mother does contribute to such an obsession among men with approval-seeking among women. Of his mother, Sodini wrote this on his blog: “Don’t piss her off or she will be mad and vindictive for years. She actually thinks she’s normal. Very dominant. Her way and only her way with no flexibility toward everyone in the household. A power and control thing. People outside the immediate family like her. Why are people vicious with their closest ones? She is the Boss above all other Bosses.”
It wasn’t just Mom’s domineering habits, though. Apparently, Dad never taught him about manhood. Of his father, Sodini wrote, “[Thank you] Dad, old man, for TOTALLY ignoring me through the years…” Here’s what Sodini wrote about a woman who noticed his resulting lack of confidence and assertiveness now as an adult: “I was invited to a picnic, and I went. An older woman there, out of the blue, asked if I liked high school. Then [she] quickly asked if I was picked on very much. Interesting why she would ask that.” The reason why she surmised that he was picked on is because he was never taught manhood, how to occupy space in this world without apologizing for one’s existence, how to exude confidence. You do that (in part) if you’re not constantly seeking approval from everyone around you, especially the ladies.
Great insight in your response. Really enjoyed reading it. This paragraph is my favorite. =):
“Women do not deserve disrespect or disdain simply for existing. Neither are they automatically entitled to respect. Neutrality, and perhaps general indifference, is the attitude that an emotionally healthy man should have toward women who are unknown to him. A healthy man should carve out an identity for himself that does not depend on the validation or affection that women have to offer. They’re just people, after all. They’re not any more special than anyone else. Sodini was obsessed with them, and that made him repulsive to them, and that made them repulsive to him.”
You say “women are not automatically entitled to respect!” So is it okay for someone to disrespectfully do to you what he has done to others? No it isn’t. Everyone is entitled to respect! This world does not belong to anyone person, we share it and with out respect of authority, community, oneself, neighbors, and etc we would have civil unrest as we did throughout the nation i.e. slavery, holocost, and other massacres that take place today in India and other countries towards women, minorities, religous groups, etc. A direct result of lack of respect for others rights, freedoms, beliefs, color, gender, and etc. Jesus said there is no way to God without going through him. If you don’t respect/believe/love who he is, then don’t expect heaven to be your home. He came as man to give us life and show us how we should conduct ourselves. His word says love thy neighbor as thyself, if someone is sick amongst you pray for them, if some one has sinned amongst you and turned there backs on God then pray for them, if someone hits you in you cheek then turn your other cheek so you can be hit there too, they take your possesion then give them more of your possessions, agree quickly with your adversaries, obide by the law of the land, give to Caeser what Caeser is do, Respect people that enforces the law because they are sent to carry out his raft (justice), Pray for your leaders, and i can go on and on! THAT SPELLS AUTOMATIC RESPECT! Jesus showed the same respect, he had the power to stop his death, kill everyone involved, BUT HE DID NOT HIS WORD SAYS HE CAME AS A SERVANT AND THAT’S WHAT WE SHOULD BE! WHAT SERVANT YOU KNOW GAVE DISRESPECT BEFORE RESPECT with out consequences! In this man blog he stated no one told him what was wrong with him, but then eluded to a woman he met asking approaching him talking to him then later asking him was he picked on much, his reply eluded to he knew what his problem was and seemed to not want to hear it. He said he has been alone yet he had a date in May 2009, but never went on to say what happened, also stated a prior date a year before. He stated he was sober for many years yet says he begin his day with JD and TEA (JD means jack danials i believe). This man seemed to want younger women but called them derogatory names and stated they were equivalent to wh**es(summarizing). Nothing seems to make this guy happy even if he gets the things he ask for. He went on to talke about someone never getting a pretty girl and being rejected by all women in america which is not possible. Rejection was in his mind, he did not accept himself, nothing would have made him happy and the same results would have happened. Why because this man refuse to blaim himself for anything and accept responsibility for his own actions. His parents were to blame he say then his brother then women then friends! Everyone accept NUMERAL UNO! why because he has a lack of respect for others he tells you what a woman should like yet he does not have one.That means he does not respect a woman as a thinking speaking human being but a possession for his own gratification (as he reffered to as edible and not human). He is self absorbed not woman absorbed he only wants gratification for self(i.e. SELFISH. He was mad at everyone and everything (not reaching his goals inspite of raises and promotions and good compliments from his boss! jealous of friends and critical of there women he felt like one settled and he could and would not!, referred to women his age as older wanting younger more attractive and already has classes/pracitces they would utilize if problems arise. This man parents should have phoned athorities when he called them or even when he exhibited this behavior. THIS MAN IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF WHY PEOPLE SHOULD HAVE RESPECT AUTOMATICALLY FOR EVERYONE AND EVERYTHING AROUND THEM! HIS LACK OF RESPECT THEREOF IS THE REASON WHY HE ISOLATED HIMSELF, BECAME ANTI-SOCIAL, CRITICIZED EVERYONE ELSE, DID NOT MEET HIS OWN EXPECTATIONS, AND FELT REJECTION GIVEN BY HIMSELF NOT OTHERS! I hear people all the time looking as normal as the next spewing this garbage about how they are this way because people rejected them, because they were rejected no matter what they joined how much effort they put into making friends, and etc. i am counseling a someone now concerning this. I’M ABOUT TO DO IMMEDIATE INTERVENTION TO THE COPS BECAUSE THEY SOUND JUST LIKE THIS MAN! I’m telling them tactfully, you force yourself on people, you are selfish, you want what you want when you want it no matter anyone else feelings, there attitude is bad and does not respect authority (yet they wonder why they getting the boot), no one ever tells them whats wrong and every thing is personal when they don’t get what they want someone doesn’t like them. It never occurs to them to read a book about there personalitiy and self improvement starting with respect for others, but they can find one about other people all day long. Problem is people lie to themselves they are not honest with themselves. It’s a reason why God say confess your sins then repent in order to be forgiven, not just to him, but to the ones you’ve offened or sinned against! When you are honest with yourself (i.e. self evaluation then change can begin) God knew if you don’t admit, acknowledge, and repent of the problem (repent means sincere regret and willingness and wantedness of change) that you would repeat the same actions and get the same result of spiritual, emotional, and eventually physical death!!!!! You ever heard a person who don’t respect themselves, don’t and can’t respect others? That is why respect is so important this man didn’t not respect himself and had no value of life not even his own, this is evident in so many ways but his words speak louder “women are not human but edible”! People if you want love, then get pracitice by loving yourself and the family that brought you here! you want respect then respect others!FINALLY GOD said if you want a friend then you have to prove your self friendly first! This mean you have to be a friend to someone first even if they don’t know how to be a friend! your kindness and loving respectful friendliness will eventually when you friends even if it’s the first person you seek! A friend gives, supports, loves, share each other burdens, sacrifice, selfless and is there for the long term through good times and bad. What did this man give to anyone one other than himself! YOU DIDN’T HEAR HE GAVE FLOWERS, BOUGHT CARDS, GAVE A GIFT, but you did hear him say he was going to stop expecting anything from anyone since he didnt get what he wanted! that implies he expected from others yet haven’t gave nothing!!
Wow, and I was so enjoying this conversation. Why do Christians start out their responses with what seem like original thinking only to fill space with Bible quotes. Would not your interpretations of these ideas have more value? Most people, religious or not get it when you are making faith based observations. However that does not stop the recitations and hit me over the head talking points. The previous blogger was only agreeing with the statement about the “idea” that someone had about respecting women was overvalued. (In that particular case at that particular time.) Not a broad generalized statement the reflected how they felt about every woman all of the time. But maybe you possess an insight that I do not, such as I took from their comment: that sometimes you just have to “lighten up”.
Okay, so I joined this gym about a month ago and luckily had not gone once. Lazy, yes, but very lucky. The Latin dance class is one that I would have definitely attended. I also lived in the same community as him.. even scarier to me. I do feel bad for him and his lack of social connection with anyone, but at the same time, it doesn’t make sense to me to get so upset over you not getting any woman’s attention (even a glance or whatever), that you take it to the extents of killing any woman just because they are a woman. Three innocent women are dead because of his insecurities and lack of self-confidence. Yes, we all have issues in that area, but to take it to such extremes is mind boggling to me. Had someone just befriended him, or thrown him a smile, or made small talk with him, this may all have been avoided. Maybe we should all reach out to someone “different” in light of this massacre. Maybe we could save an innocent life. My heart goes out to anyone affected by all of this. Families of the victims, families of George Sodini, and other people just as lost and lonely as George. May God be with you all.
Of course you must consider that anyone who showed him any attention at all might have been ignored and any woman starting to get into a relationship with him also might have ended up imprisoned in his basement. It’s obvious that he was severely delusional and reality was not a concept for him. I bet people did try to be friendly to him on average occasions but he probably just shut those people and those occasions out of his mind due to his delusional ideas of a certain specific outcome with women in favor of harboring feeling of resentment and rejection to justify his further delusions. For example as friendly as the women he killed were said to be, and how nice to neighbors and coworkers they were, I doubt that they would have “ignored” him without a smile or glance or a friendly hello. His idea of being “ignored” was that they weren’t jumping in bed with him and ready to have his children. He also seemed to ignore women in social settings, who would have been more age appropriate for himself in favor of holding out some delusion of a 18 year old just jumping at him. He obviously had a specific idea considering he had set up his whole home with waiting for the perfect girl to just miraculously show up and start cooking his meals and jump in his bed. He had even set the dining table for 2. From just the videos, the guy was very scary in a really boring and creepy way, with such fixations I can see that most normal people would have had a lot of trouble trying to get to know him, because his whole world was a delusional one in his mind and people in real life can never really fit into that kind of world, whether or not they try, simply because he would not “let” them. I understand your concern for the lonely, I too feel that concern, but one must seriously recognize the difference between a genuinely lonely person who would grab at any opportunity for a human connection, and a seriously delusional mentally deranged person who is not truely open to reality and real relationships of any sort. The truely normal lonely person becomes gracious and happy when someone takes an interest in them and befriends them, they will open up more and blossom as a person. I have seen this first hand, the delusional person rejects these outreaches and/or tries to sell thier delusions to the person reaching out causing the person reaching out to feel less obliged to keep reaching out to them, and the delusional person pushing that person further away and using that example to further enable their deranged viewpoint on things. Think about it, after seeing the videos he shot about himself, if you were at Sodini’s home he would certainly show you his home and his plan and the whole evening would be a one sided conversation with the objective of leading back to his plan and his obsessions. There’s no way it would be a mutually satisfying evening, because obsessive and delutional personality disorders act this way. They have no real concept of other people. How many people would return again for another evening of that? That is what people who get to that point mentally are like. There was a movie that Brook Sheilds starred in years ago about a girl named Laura who was shot at her workplace by a guy who had the same kind of delusional obsessive personaly disorder that it appears that Sodini seems to have possibly had, I can’t remember the name of the movie, but it was a true story. This is the mentality of these kinds of people who have the capacity to show up and start killing. They are mentally ill and need professional help, and probably should not be opperating in society. So while I understand your compassion and feelings for people who are in this unfortunate posistion, you have to realize that you nor anyone else could have helped him, becasue he would have ahad to realize that he needed help and gone to the proper mental health care provider for it, to actually get help, and he would have shut out anyone not fitting into his preconceived delusional fixation. Also, if anyone had attempted to fit into this delusion of his, he would most likely not have been able to have a normal relationship, but it would have esculated to violence at a later date, because a delusional person thrives on entire control, and real life does not fit into that box of reality. Later he would have perceieved some disloyalty by a grilfriend, real or imagined that might have esculated into some sick level of jealousy, and so on and so on, etc. Do some research into that type of mental illness, there is plenty of info on the internet. So the moral of the story is reach out to genuinely lonely people, but be careful at the same time to be certain that they are genuinely lonely and not delusional.
Bonnie is absolutely right, this Total D-bag was being rejected by women he had no realistic chance of dating in the first place. What a loser, I guess he just felt “entitled” to date young attractive women, who probably had NO interest in him even when he was their age, let alone now that he is 25-30 years older than they are. It is so funny in his blog he is at a reunion and refers to an “Older woman” coming to talk to him, when that woman was actually his own age. What a total D-bag.
I think everyone has somewhat touched on–but not really expanded on what this case brings to light. WE ALL have been through periods in our lives where we felt unwanted and rejected. There are people right now reading this who can relate to the desperation this guy felt. The difference is how we deal with those feelings. Most of us understand “dry spells” and involve ourselves in distractive activities (the gym, taking a continuing education course, or just going out with our friends), others work on self-improvement, and still others who just can’t seem to make it work reach out via internet, dating clubs, etc. We don’t develop hatred.
I watch those videos and the one striking thing that seems so obvious is his approach. Who cares that furniture matches, or that some girl will like his room? Anyone guy who went to college can tell you can successfully date girls with a 2nd hand sofa, clashing chair, and milk crates as end tables! I didn’t hear anything in these videos about himself–his aspirations, what he likes to do for fun, his interests, or any of the normal things that you generally start conversations with. I mean, even going to a bar and starting a conversation with: “I’m in this class that helps me talk to women” is probably 10x better than what seems to be his focus in these vids.
My final rambling point is: Maybe the one thing we can learn from this is that while this guy was obviously unstable–there are thousands out there who feel the same way he does and are dealing with it much better. Just because they aren’t thinking about shooting people–doesn’t mean they don’t deserve to be helped. So, just like the person previously who said that maybe we need to reach out to someone–I think that we all know that guy or girl who struggles with relationships, someone we know just needs to do something extra or change something small. Maybe those people need someone around them or close to them to give a little advice or just be there to listen.
You never know–
I took some of the stuff posted here and expanded on it. ALl is not as it seems with this guy. A few people who knew him via a volunteer job, a bar, he got out, he never quit trying. He had tenacity, that is for sure, but he most say what he said was true. He made jokes some, say dry, but always nice and polite and happy. He notes that in his diary. If he was sad no one knew it buecause he had been so isolated as he put it for years. Two people who knew him from school said his mom and brother were not kind to him as he noted. They lived 3 doors down, and he was teased from sixth grade on. I noticed something in a pic posted on a website he had, his toes curled up. That could indiate a couple things. Very high arches, maybe a toe walker or another illness. He has a slight stutter now in his vid. They get better with time but in your child hood they can be bad. Now a days speach therapy is great.Not much of an option in his day. They used to think kids who stuttered were mentally challenged too. But from the google stuff posted here, one link that looked mundane was not. He looked for help very hard and went to find it. His diary noted that the money was not an issue for a solution. He tried to find a human connection to a new church to self help. THe stem exercises he mentions are that, sort of part martial arts therapy part self positive affirmations, to get over pain from abuse etc. Hay is Louise Hay. She writes about forigiving yourself and others who have been abused. He went to charity events at bars but never drank. He just kept following the books and rules and it was not working for him. The more I looked at his internet searches from one link the more I realized he just did not quit and give up. Even has he planned to do this, and his diary noted this, he would give it all up, he was like a man sliding down a hill, desperately trying to hang on with any rock, tree, root or shrub he could hang on to. He needed a human touch and he never got it. What he did was wrong but had he had one good friend, and had he known there were some people he passed in his world that thought he was a nice guy, he may have hung on a bit longer.
THe moral of this sad lesson, this is what happens when people are bullied and teased. His boss apparently did the same thing.
RIP